Laminated products, such as vinyl flooring laminate, are used in various facilities and applications where dimensional stability or buckling resistance are desired. Laminated products are also used in ceilings, walls, table-tops, counter-tops, cabinets, or other suitable applications.
Some vinyl laminated products suffer from a drawback of being rough, having inconsistent surfaces, and/or being further misaligned over time. For example, some laminated products are further misaligned though dimensional instability between layers of the laminated products. In these products, when one or more than one layer is subjected to extreme temperatures, the expansion and/or contraction of such layers results in relative movement of the layers or portions of the layers. Such relative movement can result in delamination, separation of the layers, bubbles, buckling, cracking, curling, other undesirable consequences, or combinations thereof. In one known product, such dimensional instability results in end gap openings of flooring of up to between about 48 mils and about 96 mils on a four foot plank.
Glass sheet products have better dimensional stability than known vinyl laminated products. However, glass sheet products are too flexible for certain applications, may undesirably buckle, may be undesirably semi-translucent or semi-transparent (for example, when married to a rigid dark colored backing), may not bridge subfloor irregularities, and/or may lack desired adhesion between separate layers.
Such drawbacks of vinyl laminated products and glass sheet products can be intensified when flexible layers are adhered to rigid products.
A dimensionally stable product having a flexible layer adhered to a rigid layer, and a process of fabricating such a product that do not suffer from one or more of the above drawbacks would be desirable in the art.